


We Begin the Beguine

by nagasvoice, Stella_Omega



Series: The Principle of Moments [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Orchestra, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-12-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 16:45:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7446445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagasvoice/pseuds/nagasvoice, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stella_Omega/pseuds/Stella_Omega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pray rise for the conductor...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We begin the Beguine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't believe in fate.

“Does our Miss Emma believe in fate?” Dance asks.

Emma rubs her eyes, looks up from the stack of grant application paperwork. “What are you talking about?”

“Does Miss Emma ever pray for good luck, as some of the ladies of the Metro do before a performance?” Dance asks. He is reading sheets of music, and marking changes in careful details from his scribbled session notes. He has a lot of them. Conductor Richard Young must have been on a roll that afternoon.

“Nooo,” Emma says, amused. The sardonic editor in the back of her head remarks, _Only because it takes too much to make you ask. You_ _haven’t been on hard times that bad in the last two years Dance has been living here._ She blinks it away and says, “What brings this up?”

“Maestro Young was yelling when somebody new walked in on our practice. This guest waved hello at us and sat down to watch. Of course Young has his instinct for patrons. But this one witness simply shut off Young’s temper. There was much speculation.”

“What’d he look like, this new guy?”

“Oh, we didn’t see him very well. Not well enough to gossip. Tall,  big.  Freckle, red hairs, sports guy with a beard, going gray. Good-natured.”

“Probably not one of our regular patrons. I’ll check it out,” Emma says absently, her eyes going back to her papers. She doesn’t look at Dance again until she’s sure he’s preoccupied with his notes. But she smiles a little. So Dance doesn’t think he got a good enough look?

When he glances up with an inquiring gaze, she blinks innocently at him. Maybe Dance isn’t as preoccupied as she thought. "Not luck," she says, dead-pan, “I believe in planning.”


	2. Patron of the Arts

“Whoa, Navarre, how did that grab you!”

Drin looks up and his automatic politician’s smile becomes genuine. “You were absolutely right, Engerman, it’s a very nice little orchestra. I’ve got to thank you for the ticket– a truly delightful evening!”

“Soothe the savage beast, don’t it? I’m telling you, these kids work so damn hard, and these fundraisers are nothing compared to what they can do– all nice, polite, safe, yeah. A little Mozart, Bach, a little Corngold, nothing too lush, nothing too modern…”

"And no pressure," says a white-haired man standing behind them, grinning up at Engerman.

"Oh, there you went!" Engerman exclaims, bumping into somebody else instead. "I was just going to--"

"Engerman, my dear boy, I knew exactly where you were. Nice presentation last week, by the way. Very clear."

"Oh, thanks! Bud Innes, this is Drin Navarre, who's running the field audits section these days--"

"Yes, I've read the reports. I've been out of town a lot, so I haven't had a chance for a staff meeting down at your office, my apologies," Bud says, offering his hand and smiling up at them both. Normally Drin would step back a little, but Innes is clearly not a bit intimidated by having to crane his neck in this crowd. Although Innes is prematurely white, he looks no older than Drin does, and he's just as fit.

"Welcome to the company, Mr. Innes--"

"Bud, please," he says,moving easily in the crowd in the lobby around them. "I've _enjoyed_ reading your reports, by the way."

Drin glances at Engerman, who coughs into his hand to avoid laughing.

"You're such a methodical, consistent, patient cuss. I see those red pencil corrections, I just start cracking up. I know where that's going."

"I'm glad to hear that. Not everybody appreciates editing," Drin says. Bud's eyebrow signals his appreciation of the dry joke.

"Yeah, yeah, see? Was I right? Is this guy totally made for quality control or what?" Engerman says excitedly.

Bud pats Engerman on the arm. "A lot of auditors prefer getting out in the field to crabbing about other people's goofs."

Engerman shrugs. "Gotta have both to make it all work, takes all types, right?"

Bud looks up at Drin. "How did you like the first half tonight?" He nods at the crowd.

“The strings are particularly fine,” Drin says.

"I agree, but I am hopelessly biased," Bud says.

“Got a hell of a first chair, that Korean kid," Engerman says.  "He came over here on a prize grant. Couldn’t get a better concertmaster, I’m telling you!” Drin gets several thumps in the lapel with Engerman's meaty Gameboy thumb, but he doesn't mind. He's used to it. Some weekends have been devoted to shouting stupidly at computer monitors while Engerman stomps him at just about everything.

"The improvement in the repertoire is just--"

“I noticed several soloists. He’s willing to share the glory?” Drin asks.

“All to the good, since the man just doesn’t have that star quality, does he. Not like Valerie Philips, for instance. You saw her, the flautist with the red hair, my god what a beauty! She stands up and you just can’t take your eyes off her!”

Drin agrees that Valerie is a woman of exceptional parts.

 Innes chuckles. "Excuse me, guys, I've got a cellist to pester--" and he's gone.

“Here they come– let me do some introducing.” Drin lets himself be dragged into their path, to shake hands with the red-haired flautist, and a curly-haired, doe-eyed, wide-browed young man who plays second cello, and who's already languishing on the arm of Drin's new boss. More strings wander out. Drin meets many of them, including — “It’s a cockeyed name, but immigrants, you know”– the first violin.

“It is Dance of Knives,” the man says, and his hand is shockingly strong. He grips Drin’s fingers as precisely as he does the arthritic knuckles of the old ladies nearby, paying exact attention. The musician as athlete, Drin thinks in surprise. Drin wants to turn it over, inspect the calluses he feels. But this person is so _odd_ , so self-contained, so subtly forbidding, that he forbears to do any such thing.

“Don Ridcully Innocenzio Navarre,” Drin says, and enjoys the flicker of startlement.

The oddly light brown eyes regard him for a beat, two beats, and the mouth relaxes into a wide smile. He has very white teeth, some with ragged sharp edges. “Perhaps this is not American name either?”

“Most people call me Drin,” Drin tells him, and the violinist says; “I am often called only Dance.”

“We’re bringing Drin into the fold,” Engerman says with his arm possessively over Drin’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you onto the mailing list– because to tell you the truth,” and his voice goes warm and confiding, and Drin begins laughing before the words fall out of the man’s mouth, “the Metro needs help.”

“Of course it does,” Drin chuckles. “These little ensembles, all of them are holding on by the skin of their teeth. Engerman, I’d be delighted to become a patron. Who do the checks go to? Do I get to watch rehearsals?”

“Yes, Mister Drin, please come,” Dance says. “Excuse us, please, we must…” he’s already turning away. He pauses. “It is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance."

“I know he’s an odd duck,” Engerman says after a moment. “But a hell of a violinist.”

“What’re you drinking?” Drin says, and steers his companion towards the bar.


	3. The Back Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a lock of black hair, flung in a lazy arc on the floor. His eyes follow the line, in horrified deja-vu, and then he sees the loose gray folds of somebody's sweatshirt, and he relaxes. No one is hurt.

There's half-heard sound, coming out of the backstage hallway. It raises Drin's hackles and sends adrenalin shrilling through his bloodstream, a vocalization of pain and fright that brings him to his feet before his conscious mind even understands what it is that he heard. He drops the accordion file of records and he's moving fast and silent when he hears a soft scrabbling, a choked sigh.

Drin glances in the unisex restroom--clean, empty--and then he looks in the open door of the room at the end of the corridor. This is stuck away at the very top floor of the Metro's building, a green room for less important ensembles. Hot, stuffy odd little room, with a small bank of gym-style lockers at the back, with a bench in front of it.

A gaggle of older folding chairs take up what space is left. The trashcan is empty, but there's papers scattered, as if choirs or backup performers wait here all the time, and the theater's janitorial doesn't always bother to clean up after them. He steps inside to check on it, and sees something on the floor. It takes him a moment to realize what it is.

It's a lock of black hair, flung in a lazy arc on the floor. His eyes follow the line, in horrified deja-vu, and then he sees the loose gray folds of somebody's sweatshirt, and he relaxes. No one is hurt.

It doesn't belong to any of the women, that long black hair.

The Metro's first violinist is curled up on his side, underneath the bench by the lockers, with his shoes off and his legs tucked around the bench support in the middle. He appears to have been asleep, with his head propped uncomfortably on his folded arm. He's thrashed his socks and his sweats into a rumple, the legs twisted and the shirt rucked up so his belly shows, the muscles tan against the dark floor. His eyes are glittering slits, just barely open.

Drin pushes the outer door mostly shut, and threads his way through the chairs. He becomes aware that somebody moved the chairs to make it impossible to get at the bench without making noise.

He sits down on the other end of the bench, and takes off his jacket, and folds it up neatly into a bundle. Then he holds it down below the level of the bench. "You can return it at your convenience," he says cheerfully.

The hand takes it from his grip gently. "This is silk," says Dance, softly.

"Cleans better," Drin says. "You get some rest. Want me to close the door? It won't lock you in?"

"That would be nice, thank you, Mister Drin," Dance says.

"Any time," Drin says, getting up. He moves the chairs back into their defensive positions as he walks out. He makes sure the door latches.

 _Poor guy,_ he thinks grimly. God knows what it is that induces a guy to sleep under a bench, hiding away in the least-expected room around, out of all the places he could have chosen, but at least he'll have some peace and quiet. He's got the sudden idea that this is what Dance does with his lunch breaks, or the dead time between different kinds of practices when he may be one of the few people left in the building. God knows Maestro Young is chewing up most of their evenings with rehearsals, and Dance is constantly bringing in all kinds of string scores, not just his own section, that must have taken hours overnight to correct to the conductor's satisfaction.

For that matter, why isn't he out there in a restaurant getting something to eat, talking to people? There's an absolute requirement, for any musician with ambitions on moving up. He should be chasing every last chance to make himself known.

But there he is, as if he's just had _enough._

Enough what? Nobody talks about personal entanglements. Gossip doesn't know much of anything about Dance, which is odd, given how much influence he has. No lovers, certainly. Dance may actually be asexual, for all Drin knows. Seems a shame, but it's certainly possible. There's no there there, on the personal front.

Dance doesn't chase anybody; he never flirts; he absolutely forbids the politics of who's sleeping with who to cross that glacial expression he gets when he's sorting things out in the strings. If he knows, he never says.

With all the repeated sly barterings Drin has watched happening, a cellist's ass saving the flute's chair, he's never witnessed even the least hint of willingness from Dance in that respect-- although he's always saving the entire group's emotional basket. His successes are taken entirely for granted, which is annoying.

Well, there's the money, too, or lack of it. It's not hard for Drin to poke around in the Metro's records, as their new auditor, and look up various musician's salaries. It explains why so many of them flock noisily, like a bunch of starlings, over to local bars and taverns to clean out happy hour finger food. Dance doesn't buy snacks or lunch when he chats with people. He might get some water. Granted, he's not a real large guy, but he probably gets hungry. Would he take it, if you just handed him a sandwich out of nowhere?

But Drin knows the answer to that one.

Oh, he'd take the first one, and then he'd evaporate like a feral cat, and you'd never get near him again. Dance reveals as little as possible to all the sharp-eyed, competitive divas in the Metro.

Context, it's all about building something to lean into--which could take a while.

It's interesting, too. Like theater people, a lot of the symphony's members would sack out dramatically in the midst of company, honestly unable to sleep unless their tribe is nearby. They rely on the bustle of other people around them all the time. Everybody knows it when they're upset at the top of their lungs.

Not Dance, who wants to be left alone with his bad dreams.

Drin picks up his scattered records, sorts out the accordion file, and walks toward the office again. Unlocking the door to put things away, he suddenly realizes that he doesn't want to oblige. He doesn't want to respect the violinist's privacy. How ridiculous; why can't he find it in himself to chase the oblivious, self-centered, curly-haired second cellist, and just make Bud Innes laugh at him, like everybody else? Before Bud's arrival, he could have had Robert in about four hours flat, according to rumor. Get laid, get screamed at when he won't spend enough money on absurd indulgences, get clear in about three weeks. Of course there's other folks in the Metro who'd be pleased to borrow Robert's playbook. What's not to like?

Why would he so much rather coax the aloof cat back there under the bench to have a goddamn sandwich for a change?

_I meant to be here anyway, what are you looking at?_

Well, of course it means more when a tiger like that finally comes up to get their ruff scritched. He knows cats.

_You may provide chin scritching, if you are so inclined. If not, go to hell._

Feeling like he _wants_ to, that's the weird part.

But now that he's thought about it-- it's what he wants. _Hey, everyone needs a hobby_.


End file.
